Free Ramage and the Dido by Dudley Pope Page A

failed?’
    Hicks nodded. ‘I went down for seven hundred guineas.’
    ‘So you then decided it was time to join your ship?’
    Hicks shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not finished with it yet, sir. I need permission to leave the ship before dawn tomorrow, sir, just for an hour or two.’
    Ramage stood up and stared at the lieutenant, hardly able to believe his ears. ‘What, do you want to go riding?’
    ‘No, sir: one of the men I was playing, my biggest creditor, has called me out.’
    It took Ramage only a few seconds to consider his answer. ‘I do not permit my officers to duel.’
    ‘But sir, I have no choice. I can’t pay up seven hundred guineas and I can’t refuse the challenge.’
    ‘Let me be sure I understand you, Hicks. You’ve been accused of cheating, you owe seven hundred guineas, and you’ve been called out?’
    ‘That’s it, sir. If I don’t fight I’ll be branded a cheat and still owe seven hundred guineas.’
    ‘Who has challenged you?’
    ‘The second lieutenant of the Hyperion frigate, sir. He’s famous as a duellist,’ he added uncomfortably.
    ‘And the weapons?’
    ‘Pistols, sir, at ten yards.’
    ‘If you accept the challenge, you’re a dead man, Hicks, and more important I’m short of a fifth lieutenant.’
    ‘I know, sir,’ the young man said, sounding trapped. ‘The trouble is that this isn’t the only gambling debt I have, and he’s threatened to go to my father – after the duel.’
    ‘After you’re dead, you mean.’
    ‘Probably, sir. But quite a few people have been to my father, and he’s refused to pay any more debts.’
    ‘I can’t say I blame him. Gambling like this is a disease, Hicks. How long have you been at it?’
    ‘Two or three years, sir. I won at first.’
    ‘By cheating?’
    ‘Well, taking every advantage I could,’ Hicks said lamely.
    Ramage said, his voice cold, ‘This means my new fifth lieutenant is a cardsharper who has been caught out cheating and called out. And you have the thundering cheek to ask me if you can leave the ship for an hour at dawn tomorrow morning!’
    ‘But I don’t have any choice, sir: my luck has run out.’
    ‘That will teach you to rely on luck. Any man who does that is a fool. That will be all. Tell the sentry to pass the word for the first lieutenant.’ Hicks waited, as though he had more to say, and then, white-faced, turned on his heel and left the cabin.
    When Aitken arrived Ramage, who had resumed sitting on the breech of the 12-pounder, said: ‘This new fifth lieutenant: a bad bargain, I’m afraid.’
    ‘How so, sir?’
    ‘He’s a cardsharper who has been caught by a lieutenant from the Hyperion frigate and called out. He’s due to fight at dawn tomorrow.’
    ‘So we’ll need a new fifth lieutenant,’ Aitken said unsympathetically. ‘Well, we’ve got on quite well so far without one.’
    ‘This fellow has been in Portsmouth for days. He’s been staying at the Star and Garter, gambling away some prize money. He lost seven hundred guineas, cheated and was caught. Not his only gambling debt, he tells me.’
    Aitken groaned. ‘Why do we have to get him? We’ve been lucky up to now.’
    ‘Well, we have two problems. How to prevent him fighting this duel, and how to get him changed.’
    Aitken said grimly: ‘Let him fight the duel and the second problem might solve itself, sir: with him dead the Admiralty have to replace him.’
    ‘No officer of this ship is going to fight a duel,’ Ramage said stubbornly. ‘Not even a grubby cardsharper. The question is how we stop him. We have to do it in such a way that it isn’t a question of him refusing the challenge, though why we should be concerned with his squalid honour I don’t know. He was sitting gambling at the Star and Garter with orders to join the Dido stuffed in his pocket.’
    ‘How many days, sir?’
    ‘I don’t know. Three or four, I think.’
    ‘That’s disobeying a direct Admiralty order.’
    Ramage glanced at Aitken. ‘So I